Philip Henry Gosse | |
|---|---|
 Gosse in 1855 | |
| Born | 6 April 1810 Worcester, Worcestershire, England |
| Died | 23 August 1888 (aged 78) Torquay, Torbay, England |
| Known for | Marine biology, aquarium pioneer, Omphalos ("last Thursdayism") |
| Spouse | Emily Bowes |
| Children | Edmund Gosse |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Naturalist |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Gosse |
Philip Henry Gosse FRS (/ɡɒs/; 6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), known to his friends as Henry,[1] was an English naturalist and populariser of natural science, an early improver of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. Gosse created and stocked the world's first public marine aquarium at London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium" when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854. His work was the catalyst for an aquarium craze in early Victorian England.[2]
Gosse was also the author of Omphalos, an attempt to reconcile the geological ages presupposed by Charles Lyell with the biblical account of creation. After his death, Gosse was portrayed as an overbearing father of uncompromising religious views in Father and Son (1907), a memoir written by his son, Edmund Gosse, a poet and critic,[3] although it has since been said that "Gosse's testimony concerning his father falls short".[4]
- ^ Thwaite (2002), p. xix.
- ^ Katherine C. Grier (2008) Pets in America: A History. p. 53. University of North Carolina Press
- ^ One of Edmund's friends described Father and Son as "a story of rank cruelty and almost insanity." Virginia Woolf wrote of "the narrowness, the ugliness" of Edmund's upbringing, and "the almost insane religious mania of the father." Quoted in Thwaite (2002), p. xv. There are three portraits of Gosse at the National Portrait Gallery.
- ^ D. Wertheimer, "A Son and His Father: Edmund Gosse's Comments and Portraits, 1875-1910," Nineteenth-Century Prose 48 (Spring/Fall 2021), 45-92.